There’s a long comment over at NASA Watch that pretty much sums up how we got to where we are today:
Let me tell you how NASA works. Engineers in the hallways lament that they can’t believe we are designing a rocket and spacecraft this way….with very little redundancy in critical systems, no weight margin, severely restricted capabilities from what we initially wanted out of the system. And then these same engineers enter the meeting room and none will jump on the table and beat their fists and tell others what they *really* think. All of the design reviews come off swimmingly because everyone is drinking the kool-aid. You end up with a “forward work” chart a mile long but everyone smiles and exits stage left.
In a nutshell you have tremendous group-think within NASA. Why do they behave this way? I will give you a hint….its because they don’t want to rock the boat and they all want to collect their paycheck with a minimum of fuss and they all want to be promoted on schedule – many, many people think that “everything will just work itself out”.
So the answer to the initial question is that in the 1960s the people designing the hardware had real world experience building missles and they were not afraid to speak up and be heard – and they had leaders who were experts in their field – who knew what they were doing.
Today, none of the Cx leaders have any such experience. All of that experience died years ago when those people retired.
And it’s allowed to be this way, because space isn’t important. All that’s important are the jobs.
They fear political feedback, not engineering feedback.
What would be perfect is to kill that culture, but barring that NASA needs something like an anonymous Digg on the Intranet, where engineers can log on, write opinions, vote them up and down, etc. but with the guarantee of anonymity.
In the couple of project management courses I’ve taken I believe it was pointed out that a good project manager should periodically schedule a review meeting with key stakeholders to insure that the project scope and quality of deliverables are being upheld to standards outlined in the original project plan and subsequent contracts. Challenges arise when a project is so constrained in schedule that there isn’t anytime to implement a feedback loop into the project planning until after the project is complete. At this point everyone can agree that indeed this thing we just built totally sucks but oh well what about it now. Or, a poor project manager will often not really find benefit in seeking and interpreting feedback, the so called, “My way or the highway” approach.
I think that most project managers mean well but are often cocooned from the reality of a project by team leads who want to isolate negatives to accentuate the positives. This is where I think things generally break down in an environment where you have multiple levels of middle management. The middle manager folks are particularly aware that their positions are generally untenable and they want to make every effort to make things seems as peachy cheery as possible so as to not draw unwanted criticism. Otherwise, the dreaded question can often result, “Hey wait, what is it precisely you productively do for us around here?”
Despite the advertising, there is not “one NASA”. Different parts work differently. The comment you link doesn’t reflect the NASA I work at.
I’m sure we have our own dysfunctions though.
I’m still fairly young, so far, but even I’ve noticed that being the person to speak up in meetings when I notice a problem, and say what everyone else is thinking, can get mixed reactions in the private sector, but is fairly harshly punished in the public sector.
Which is a shame, because the benefits that the unions have been able to coerce the public sector into providing for their employees is like a second paycheck compared to the benefits I’ve found thus far in the private sector.
“And it’s allowed to be this way, because space isn’t important. All that’s important are the jobs.”
Good insight. One, alas, applicable to many other governmental entities.